Prospecting New Country

Margaret and I were driving along a certain outback road in far north Queensland and I said, "There's got to be gold around here; just look at this country we're driving through. The rocks look just right and did you see that quartz reef in the road cutting?"

I braked and parked with difficulty as there was barely enough space beside the road. I broke a piece of quartz off and examined it closely. I couldn't see any gold but wouldn't have been surprised if there'd been a few specks there.

We kept driving, caravan in tow, and found ourselves behind a slow, heavily laden road train. As there was a kilometre of empty road visible ahead, I decided to pass the 50-metre long vehicle. We cleared the first trailer and then the next but horror of horrors, saw another road train speeding toward us. The fact I wrote this story tells you we made it but not before testing how fast our hearts could beat. I decided I had to do something to avoid similar situations in the future.

It wasn't that my vehicle was gutless (it was towing a 2-ton caravan) but I decided that for future trips I would fit a computer chip to my turbo diesel Colorado so I purchased a cheap, overseas-made chip and fitted it. The result was a nightmare. It produced no extra power and made the diesel engine burn more fuel than before!

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